ADDiCT wrote:I wish Mudlord would use some kind of versioning scheme, at least for the setup filenames...

Gawd, yer tellin' me ! I've been unofficially myself calling them various things (the latest being "v1.06"), but it surely gets confusing <grin>.

One thing to keep in mind (I've prolly posted this here previously, but I really don't remember): the actual driver itself (BASSMIDIDrv.dll) hasn't changed a bit since it's first incarnation by Kode54 (on March 31).

Only the installer and config utility has changed (for folks having problems with getting the driver to "stick" when selecting it as the active MIDI device for WinDoZe).

I like Rich's "internal versioning scheme" - clean and simple. Holds lots of numbers for the minor revision, major revision can easily be updated if/when a new BASSMIDI driver is released (and implemented).

For those who don't wanna download and install the utility (just for the SoundFont), here it is -> download.php?id=8982 (1MGM_AWE32_ROM_Dump_SoundFont.zip 1000KB, extracted "1MGM.sf2" 1,090,280 bytes).

Load that one into the BASSMIDI Driver, and vualla (how the hell do you spell that !?)... instant virtual AWE32

already ahead of you on that, infact i've already got both of those soundfonts loaded for a week now

OPL is spoiled by reverb, and proper panning though. I still think a OPL emu driver + mapper would be an awesome idea for that, then again there's also probably no such thing as a OPL3 driver for 64bit....

leileilol wrote:already ahead of you on that, infact i've already got both of those soundfonts loaded for a week now

leileilol wrote:OPL is spoiled by reverb, and proper panning though.

Dunno about the panning, but try DOOM and DOOM2 using the OPL3 SoundFont... Bobby Prince didn't add a drop of reverb (or chorus) to the original MIDI files for those games (I don't think there's any in Heretic and Hexen as well).

Hmmm... I do know that the BASSMIDI Driver supports various Yamaha XG sysex messages; in particular, two that totally disable the reverb and chorus effects. I don't think those sysex messages would "stick" though, after sending the sysex message, and then either playing a MIDI file, or starting a game under DOSBox though (especially with DOOM or DOOM2, as those games send a GM reset sysex when the game starts, and a GS reset sysex when they shut down).

leileilol wrote:I still think a OPL emu driver + mapper would be an awesome idea for that, then again there's also probably no such thing as a OPL3 driver for 64bit....

Yeah, I think that something for OPL3, done like the MUNT MT-32 driver, would be extremely cool

Load that one into the BASSMIDI Driver... and you have virtual Roland Sound Canvas SC-55. Now, what is the advantage to using the BASSMIDI Driver with this SoundFont (verses simply the Microsoft GS Wavetable Software Synthesizer)?

Simply because the BASSMIDI Driver supports ALL KINDS OF THINGS that the crapola MSGS SW Synth does NOT... e.g. reverb and chorus MIDI controllers, as well as a slew of other Roland GS MIDI controllers and sysex messages

Load into the BASSMIDI Driver... virtual Gravis Ultrasound Note: Like the "OPL-3 FM 128M" SoundFont mentioned previously; DOSBox does a pretty good job of emulating a GUS's MIDI music (using the *actual* original GUS patches), but what the hey... yoe can use it "globally" within WinDoZe

P.S. One last one, another larger Roland SC-55 SoundFont (that also looks to be originally based upon the "GM.DLS" sound set) -> http://www.mediafire.com/?nundyjjtcnm , "Roland SC-55 v1.1.sf2" (9.9 megabytes).

I was thinking more of like some driver that's DOSBox's oplemu core (and not mame's, adplug's or ken's), listening on port 388, for another driver to render through to (say, like Creative FM Synth .drv file or something). but since that latter part is deprecated for 64-bit it probably would need a new driver for that as well, unless you can find a SB16 W7 64-bit driver...

or it'd just be easier for one usermode driver that accepts different timbres/patches (the standard FM Windows driver timbres would have theirs extracted and available separately probably). There was one for Win3.1 that did that but it wasn't very reliable

There's no API in Windows that you could hang an OPL emulator off of that would make it useful in the same way that MIDI is. Direct port access in Windows starting going the way of the dodo with Win2K, and most anything that needs to access OPL that way can probably just be run in DOSBox instead.

For new projects wanting to use OPL there are plenty of modular, cross-platform, open-source OPL emulation cores out there, which allows a developer to just pick one and plug it in. Creating a Windows system driver for an OPL emulator strikes me as a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.

Load that one into the BASSMIDI Driver, and viola (I actually KNOW had to spell that one Laughing Out Loud!)... instant virtual SB16 OPL3 FM music

what you heard is wrong

I was thinking more of like some driver that's DOSBox's oplemu core (and not mame's, adplug's or ken's), listening on port 388, for another driver to render through to (say, like Creative FM Synth .drv file or something). but since that latter part is deprecated for 64-bit it probably would need a new driver for that as well, unless you can find a SB16 W7 64-bit driver...

I was thinking of more like something for GM MIDI playback, but instead using OPL2/3 patches via emulation. And yeah, DOSBox's opl core would be nice since that soundfont sounds kinda off in places.

mudlord wrote:I was thinking of more like something for GM MIDI playback, but instead using OPL2/3 patches via emulation. And yeah, DOSBox's opl core would be nice since that soundfont sounds kinda off in places.

OPL has no inherent relation to MIDI, but you could probably write something like the old OPL MIDI drivers for Windows 3.1 (only using an emulation core instead of real OPL hardware) that translate MIDI to OPL commands.

I just don't see it being worth the effort, though, unless you're wanting to use it for composing or something (but then why not use an OPL VST plugin or something instead?), because we've already got things like DOSBox/ScummVM with built-in OPL emulation.

That OPL/FM soundfont cannot do universal OPL emulation. whenever midi is send to an FM chip or emulator, it first needs to go through a midi-to-FM conversion bank. Like the one from Voyetra, Allegro, Miles soundsystem/The Fatman, DMX (Doom). etc.

But the above is not that interesting really, because it is a translation process that will not bring out the best of the FM capabilities. It was just like that to save time for the composers, so they did not have to redo the music for FM specifically. Earlier games had music composed for the OPL chip directly. Which is much more interesting, but has nothing to do with midi.

Still there might be some fun in playing midi sounding like FM in some way.

Mudlord just released a new version of the BASSMIDI Driver (now officially known as "version 1.06"). The driver itself has been updated as well as the configuration utility (adding a master volume slider).

The "7F" in the Reverb Master Level above should jack the reverb WAY up.

When the BASSMIDi Driver is set as the active Windows MIDI device and I play the MIDI file with any Windows MIDI player, the reverb is there (meaning the sysex messages are indeed being transmitted and recognized by the BASSMIDI Driver).

When I play the MIDI file with any DOS MIDI player under DOSBox, the extra reverb set by the "GS/XG Reverb Master Level" sysex doesn't seem to be doing anything... all that I hear is the standard MIDI controller #91 reverb.

Now to throw a cog into the wheel... as an experiment, I tried this:

I set the Windows active MIDI device to "Out To MIDI Yoke: 1", and then used another virtual MIDI patch cable utility called "MIDI Thruway" to connect "Out To MIDI Yoke: 1" to the BASSMIDI Driver.

After doing that, I could hear the additional reverb under DOSBox just fine. Which of course (at least to me), doesn't really make sense (i.e. what would be the difference of piping straight to the BASSMIDI Driver, verses through MIDI Yoke, and then to the BASSMIDI Driver).

Dunno if it's the BASSMIDI Driver itself, or DOSBox... but like I said before, I'm thinking maybe DOSBox (?).